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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Please join Rep. Brad Klippert and me at our 8th legislative district town hall meeting this Saturday, Feb. 17 from 9:00 a.m. to noon at the ARC of Tri Cities, 1455 Fowler Street in Richland.
You are invited to discuss the 2018 legislative session, including updates on the bipartisan fix to the so-called Hirst decision and other important issues.
If you’re unable to attend, you can also take part in our hour-long telephone town hall on Tuesday, Feb. 20 beginning at 6:00 p.m. If you do not receive a phone call, you can dial (509) 941-2750 to join the program. Just press STAR (*) on your telephone keypad at any time to ask a question or just listen in from the comfort of your own home.
My bills
Click here to read a guest editorial published in the Tri-City Herald about my legislation to change elections for irrigation districts. The article was written by Kennewick City Councilman John Trumbo.
You can click here for a KEPR TV story on legislation I’m cosponsoring to raise the age to buy tobacco and vaping products to 21.
You can also click here to watch my interview on TVW about my bill to give some relief to sick Hanford workers who were exposed to harsh chemicals.
With only about three weeks left in the 2018 legislative session, things are moving quickly. We’ve been working well past midnight the last few nights as we work to get done in the allotted 60 days.
We’ll spend the next week or so looking over Senate bills and then I expect the focus to shift a bit onto the 2018 supplemental budget as we receive the state’s next economic and revenue forecast. As this is a supplemental budget year, and as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, I tend to follow these guidelines when looking at adding new spending to the two-year operating budget:
- Is it an unanticipated, unmanageable change in an entitlement program workload or caseload?
- Does it correct a serious technical error in the original appropriation?
- Does it deal with an emergency?
- Does it address an opportunity that will not be available next biennium?
If the proposed increase in spending does not address one of these issues, I believe it can wait until we sit down and write our next two-year operating budget. People need to remember that the 2017-19 operating budget was signed into law by the governor less than eight months ago.
Thank you for reading my email update and for staying involved. I hope to see you at our town hall meeting this weekend, or hear from you during our telephone town hall next week.
It is such an honor to serve you in Olympia.
Sincerely,
Larry Haler
